DK6SP

Day 2 at Dayton Hamvention 2019 started early for us. We arrived around 1h before the official opening at 8 am.

The YOTA booth within the Hamradio 2.0 area in Volta Hall is crowded all the time. Many people are coming by to visit and have a chat with us. More and more people are recognizing our faces and activities from recent social media postings and magazine articles. So did even the mayor of Xenia, Sarah J. Mays. We were taking part at the official opening ceremony in between the halls of the fair ground. After the official procedure the press officer of the mayor bureau came over to us. He had asked us if they could take a picture with us. We have been really honoured and chatted a bit about the future of amateur radio and the YOTA program with them. They were really impressed and wished us good luck for the future. Find this awesome picture below in the gallery.

As you can see our YOTA flag is with us wherever we go. Many hams and future operators come by and stop us for pictures. Please do not hesitate to do so, we are glad to talk to everybody of you and taking pictures. Of course, the traditional clothes are also doing there job for getting some attention here in Dayton, Ohio.

One of our main tasks for today was to visit a lot of our prime long time supporters like YASME Foundation or Messi & Paoloni Cables at the fair. We had great chats about the future of the YOTA program there as well. Thanks for your ongoing support!

Another big point on our list has been the presence at the International Amateur Radio Union booth together with the IARU worldwide president Tim (VE6SH) and Dave (K1ZZ). We spoke about future projects, upcoming YCP events and the December Youth Month and its progress over the years.

One of our YOTA team members here in Dayton, Markus (DL8GM), who is also member of our YOTA IT department also has a second booth to be here. He is doing the Linux version of the newly introduced Charly25 project. We met up with him and he gave us a short introduction to their new SDR radio. We were emphasized and a lot of youngsters joined the conversation just by seeing our faces there. So we can say that here are all over youngsters involved in great projects.

After a great evening at Crowne Plaza Hotel in the city of Dayton and many interesting conversations with the worlds top known contesters and DXers we ended the day very successfully. We will be back tomorrow at the fair with talks about our Youth Contesting Program at 12:00 at the Hamradio 2.0 forum. Furthermore we were invited to join the international contest dinner again in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in the evening.

In conclusion it has been an awesome first fair day and we are really looking forward for tomorrow!

Flying from Munich (Germany) via Atlanta (Georgia, USA) we arrived in Dayton late on wednesday evening. After checking into our apartment we headed to the fair ground on the next morning. The booth is almost set up and we are more or less ready to go. On the evening we joined the annual international affairs welcome dinner in Dayton and met some new faces from all over the world already.
While still suffering from changing timezones and finding the right time to sleep we are working on plans for the upcoming days. Lots of talks and events on our list, not to forget the evening program!
Please feel free to visit us at in the Volta hall (Building 4) at booth 4304 directly next to the Hamradio 2.0 area.
Talk to us where ever you can catch us!

Looking forward to another great weekend ahead including meeting a lot of new faces and great talks.

This year’s second Kidsday will be held on Saturday 15th of June . This event is especially created to promote Amateur Radio to youth. This is a moment where you can share your amateur radio hobby with your family, grandkids, friends, scouts or even to the general public. This day can be the first time for youth to experience a real radio QSO, hopefully they get interested in becoming a licensed amateur radio operator.
You could make use of this suggested exchange: Name, age, location and favourite colour. Be sure to work the same station again if an operator has changed. To draw attention, call “CQ Kids Day.”

Once agin ES5TV opened his station doors for the well known YOTA Youth Contesting Program participating youngsters during ARI DX contest as always. This year we didn’t put together such a big team to compete in M/M category, but looks like we did put together another M/S world winning team. We were a 5 operator team, 3 of them were youngsters under the age of 26 – Carmen ES5CAMA, Mari ES5MARI and me Kris YL3JA. We had two OMs as well, Kaspars YL1ZF and Jüri ES5JR. We had another team for the stuff in kitchen and food, that was my girlfriend Endija (let’s say that she’s from YL1ZT and YL1XN clubs hihi). Another team consists of Valery ES5QA who was the main cheerleader and sauna operator. Contest was great as always, with just a few little issues, like flexRadio suddenly wanted to make an update, but otherwise everything worked smoothly. It’s always interesting to participate in this kind of contest, jumping between 3 modes. Anyway, thank you to Tonn (ES5TV) again for letting youngsters participate from your “big gun station”. It was a big pleasure for all of us and hopefully there will be more youngsters joining the YCP soon, it is real fun!

Monday, the departure day, started with a secret girls’ morning sauna. After breakfast, we listened to Hungary’s presentation about their youth activities. It was inspiring to hear how they are trying to change this hobby into more fitting for the youth.

After the presentation it was time for people to start packing and later on leave the camp. As you can imagine, it was pretty sad for everyone as we had had a nice camp and had met a lot of wonderful, new people from our hobby! It would take long before we would meet again. Luckily we have our Telegram group, and why not set up a sked on band too?

But of course we had time for our last lunch together. For the whole weekend we had excellent food prepared by our cook Tiiti OH3HNY with some help from other organizers.

Quickly after lunch, the bus departed for Helsinki airport and harbour. With it, it was time for everyone except Swedish and Finnish teams and our German to leave.

The bus trip may have been a fun one, but the Finns and the Swedes now had the best part of the camp ahead: the rest of the day was devoted to cleaning the venue. The station with the tower and antennas also got down during the day. What a job that was! Later on the evening it was time for team Sweden to leave. Which left only us, Finns (and the German) who left home on Tuesday.

All in all, the camp was a really successful sequel for NOTA 2018 in Sweden! This made a real challenge for the organizing country of NOTA 2020, whoever will it be?! Whatever happens, we hope to see you next year in some other Nordic country!

Sunday, the third day of the camp started with the happening invented by the Swedish youth team. The challenge was to design a chosen type of CW paddle (straight, bug or sweeper) and build it out of a piece of plank, conducting tape, nails and the special rule, at least one fruit! The result was 8 keys with bananas an apples, even a Nokia phone! After the competition all the keys were tested on air and many youngsters got to try working CW for the first time.

During this time, half a dozen people were out in the woods activating a OHFF area Teijo National Park (OHFF-0112). It is great that so many wanted to try to activate the park that was 28 km away from Leirisalo. For them the day started early, approximately at 6:30 and they, of course, made some coffee. Everybody didn’t get so excited but the fun part in this hobby is that there is something for everyone.

The view at Teijo National Park was awesome, there was a fireplace and some snacks made by Tiiti OH3HNY. The atmosphere was awesome and we had so much fun.

This time the group had a Yaesu FT-817 and end fed half wave antenna for 80-10m, a log book and five watts to work with. It was a little hard but they did it. Together. Almost sixty QSOs and 2,5h later the youngsters returned back to campsite for lunch.

After the delicious falafel lunch we had four presentations about scouting and JOTA/JOTI from the Netherlands PA3L, Norway LB4IH, Iceland TF2EQ and Finland OH1ESI & OH1UBO. Getting to know your fellow mates in the camp is easiest done by sharing your stories!

Then it was time for the traditional Off air contest. With huge amounts of QRM from several crazy finns our participants max QSO count ended on ca 20 in 9 minutes.

When our ears finally got to rest for a bit it was time for more participant presentations. This time Oliver SA5ODJ introduced all friends to the interesting online material available from Dayton contest university and spoke about yagi theory. After all the presentations everyone learned something, from newbie to pro.

During the evening there was shack operation, ABBA singstar, taco sunday, sauna time and a huge pile of Finnish pancakes. If you’ve followed us on Instagram (@nordicsontheair) you might have seen some fantastic footage from the singstar session…

The Saturday morning dawned with a bit of rain. Apparently people had not been active at the OH2YOTA station late in the night because they started to gather at the main building way before the official wake-up call. We got a nice breakfast, a combination of traditional Finnish porridge and leftovers from the intercultural evening last night. Did you know that you can use the Norwegian Geitost as a topping to oatmeal porridge?

Today was the first day of real action. We started with two lectures about different ways of spending time outdoors with a radio: ARDF and OHFF. Keijo, OH2ETM, introduced us to ARDF, amateur radio direction finding, or casually: radio orienteering, or even more casually: fox hunting. Keijo was wearing the official Finnish team outfit from a world championship competition where he represented Finland. Anu, OH6ME, had prepared an introduction to OHFF, or how to activate nature sites on radio. OHFF would be on schedule tomorrow, but today we had a chance to try radio orienteering.

So after lunch everyone stuffed their pant legs into their socks (tick prevention action) and headed for the forest, to find the ‘foxes’ Keijo had planted there. Some guys had changed to real orienteering equipment, and they were the first to finish the track, too. The sweaty Swedes emerged from the forest, asking first for coffee and then for sauna. Others took it a bit more easy, a nice walk in the forest.

Every night ends with a relaxing sauna, and today we got to enjoy barbecue Makkara = sausage as well. Too bad the morning rain was not heavy enough to put an end to the grass fire warning, and we were not able to have a full experience of open-fire barbecue. Safety first, and so we used gas to burn the sausages.

Fun fact: In Finland (at least some parts of it) the mustard types are graded HF, VHF, UHF, and SHF, depending on the intensity of the taste!

The camp, that has been planned since last autumn, is finally here! Organizers of the camp including Finnish youth team with some active adults arrived at the venue, Leirisalo on Thursday. Thursday’s plan was to set up the station, print info papers, make food and make the final plans for the camp.

Friday morning was tough for every organizer. Some of us had been awake until 2, trying to get the station to work. The hours in the morning went fast finishing work from Thursday, and for the last briefings. The first team to arrive in Leirisalo was Sweden and the rest arrived in the afternoon.

The very first afternoon of the camp started with some instructions and going through the upcoming program. Also, we had ice-breaker games to get to know each other.

But that was not all of it. The main program of the day was ahead of us. In this YOTA sub-regional camp we also had the famous YOTA-activity, Intercultural evening.

On the camp, we have participants from 8 different countries. So we had a lot of new interesting foods and drinks to try. Also, one of the organizers, Vilma, had just come from Taiwan with some exotic Asian foods to bring to us. After all, Intercultural evening on NOTA19 was a very successful and a lot of fun.

Rest of the evening went the Finnish way, going to the sauna! Despite the so-called “shyness” of Finns, everyone got along.

Very good start for the second NOTA, and the second YOTA sub-regional camp of the year!

The participants view …

This morning the Swedish NOTA team woke up in Åbo after a night spent on the ferry. After a short breakfast on a restaurant we all stuffed ourselves into the cars and went to Salo. After about 40 min (plus minus some navigation errors) we arrived in Leirisalo where the camp is held.
After arrival, we started mounting the Yagi-antenna and we got it half way up before lunch.
The lunch (a nice tasting soup) was extra nice tasting due to us being tired and hungry and because of the very good company. The tower work continued after lunch, but we still had a lot to do when the last bunch of people arrived by a charter bus.
It is amazing what the Finnish radio amateurs can do! We found out that everyone participating and organising the camp was a licensed amateur radio operator, from the cook to the bus driver. The Finnish youth team had done a great work in recruiting help for the camp.
The camp site, Leirisalo, comprises a main building, sleeping quarters, summer kitchen with cold eating facilities, and a sauna. The youth team had even delivered a lake next to the sauna, WOW. We were warned of snakes and mosquitoes, the former being poisonous but luckily the latter being the more probable ones to attack us. The place is surrounded by forest on one side and the lake on the other side. Today, the Finnish weather struck us really warm and pleasing, and we are hoping for it to continue so for the whole weekend.

We will be QRV on most short-wave bands during the weekend and we try to activate most modes as well.

We hope to hear you on the bands!
73 de OH2YOTA
(With keyboard ops OH3HNY, Tiiti and SA7GGO, Gustav)

Sunday, March 17th

Also on Sundays it started again at 8 o’clock with breakfast. Since this also meant the last day, the last things were packed into the suitcase, checked out at the hotel and then it was the last time to the amateur radio centre. Arrived here, the Saturday afternoon was continued: three timeslots were offered for further workshops, groups, conversations and handicrafts, whereby one had partly also opportunity to catch up missed workshops from the previous day. The offer was again fully exploited and there was still a lot of radio transmission in the tower as DF0YOTA.
Before lunch, there was a joint final round in which many of the self-organised programme items were summarised. Thus one could be shown once again how diverse the contributions of the young people were in the self-organized Barcamp style.
Afterwards everyone had the opportunity to anonymously write down their thoughts about the Subregional Camp in Baunatal. With the help of a divided feedback wall all participants, but also the Orga, could be told again what was on their hearts. This possibility was well accepted and subsequently read aloud. The three participants, who had received their DE callsign the evening before, of course received their certificates!
For lunch there were delicious homemade cheese noodles, which were completely taken over by some participants and everything was organized by themselves!
Afterwards it was time to say goodbye to the first ones, who unfortunately had to go home. But some could still stay and help to clean up.
After the last things had been tidied up, the supervisors handed over the YOTA flag signed by all 60 participants to the DARC management on behalf of the youngsters.
More reports and pictures will follow in the next few days, so be curious.

Saturday, March 16th

After a long day yesterday, the second day started early again. From 8 a.m. onwards all participants were present at breakfast in the hotel. Everyone strengthened themselves for the long day ahead. Afterwards the whole group went to the DARC Headquarters. There we were already friendly expected.

At the beginning three groups were divided which visited alternately the CQDL editor-in-chief Stefan (DH5FFL), the chief of the QSL sorting Dietmar (DL1ZAX) and in representation for the DARC management the DARC youth coordinator Gerrit (DH8GHH) and punched with questions to the respective topic areas. Thus the process of the CQDL – from the first contribution idea up to the finished CQDL -, the way of the QSL cards from our home QTH over Baunatal up to the receiver and the individual coworkers and their tasks in the DARC were presented.

After the question hours were over, we returned to the entrance area for a leisurely lunch. Participant Mathis (DL7MLP) programmed his own booking system for beverages with RFID chip cards – alias the camp name badges – and tried it out directly. Afterwards we went next door to the amateur radio centre, where we continued directly with a short guided tour through the camp rooms Alpha, Bravo, Charly, Delta, Echo, Foxtrott and Golf, as well as through the radio tower.

The rest of the day was explained afterwards. First, everyone who had offered a workshop should briefly introduce the content and find a suitable time slot and room for it. At the end a well filled program on the whiteboard resulted, so that everyone could get an individual overview, when the points of interest for everyone took place. At the same time DFØYOTA was activated from the tower. So there was a lot of radio work, SDRs were examined, Raspberry Pis were programmed, satellite QSOs were explained and done, DXPediton experiences were exchanged, lectures were held, (ARDF) foxes were hunted and much more! Everybody just had something to do and it definitely didn’t get boring. Due to the flexible programe everyone could pursue their own interests in amateur radio. The positive side effect was also that during the course of the day almost every one of the 60 participants talked to each other and got to know each other better.

Pizzas were delivered to the amateur radio centre just in time for dinner afterwards. So every youngster found something to his/her taste. Moreover, the evening continued freshly fortified and we let the day pass in review together. Everyone returned to the hotel with a smile on their faces. Unfortunately the departure from the YOTA Subregional Camp is scheduled for tomorrow … but more in the next report.